CW33 - Rachel DeAlto, chief dating expert at Match, joined the Morning After to share what to look for when on the dating scene this year.
1,030 posts categorized "Match.com"
Match and Candace Bushnell Team up to Help Singles Find Love in 2022
PR NEWSWIRE - Match has partnered with Candace Bushnell, international best-selling author and the OG Carrie Bradshaw, to help Match members find love during dating's peak season. Starting January 2, known as 'Dating Sunday', Candace will be overseeing Match's new Expert Picks feature. With Expert Picks, members will take a quiz to opt-in to receiving hand-picked matches from the Match Experts team, and Candace herself will be personally dropping in to deliver matches.
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Match.com Brings Back the Human Touch
WALL STREET JOURNAL - From online dating to social media, algorithms are getting more assistance from humans. Since February, Match Group has been testing a human matchmaking layer to its namesake Match app and will provide two handpicked matches for users willing to pay $4.99 a week. The pilot involves a 50-member team who have been trained as dating coaches by the company. Match said ~30% of its members have already opted in for the feature. Users of the feature were eight times more likely to match - or mutually like one another - with an expert pick versus without the service, Match said.
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Match Introduces Human Matchmaking
WALL STREET JOURNAL - For $4.99 a week Match dating experts will go through a user's answers to four questions and pair them. A 50-member team, trained as dating coaches, will select two profiles for participating members each week, drawing from the same algorithm-generated pool Match provides. Questions include, what a person would change about their dating life, and what sort of person a user gravitates toward. "The company created the feature because, for some singles, the pandemic has added a degree of urgency to finding a long-term relationship," said Amarnath Thombre, CEO of Match Group Americas. "People have had enough time to reflect," "Traditional matchmaking services are costly, starting in the thousands of dollars for just a few months. But these services are worth it to customers who don't have the time to sort through candidates on apps," said Tammy Shaklee, founder/matchmaker of H4M, an LGBTQ matchmaking service.
by Ann-Marie Alcántara
See full article at Wall Street Journal
Mark Brooks (owner of matchmaker.com): Fascinating stuff, but I think calling this matchmaking is an offense to the matchmaking industry. $5 a week may well be a scalable price-point, but I don't think this service does justice to the humanity of the service matchmakers provide. The whole point of (quality) matchmaking is to get deep into the person, council and coach them, and provide custom advice to the individuals, with occasional appropriately sugar-coated but tough feedback. Match's service appears to be a commitment vehicle. I don't quite see how this service quite passes muster as matchmaking, even as a minimum effective dose. Let's see. Looks like the opposite end of the spectrum to the matchmaking service eHarmony introduced and experimented with years ago.
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Tinder and Match Asking Users to Urge Senators to Pass Violence Against Women Act
THE HILL - Match, Tinder, OkCupid, BLK, Chispa and Plenty of Fish, all of which are part of Match Group, have prompted their users to send an email to their senators "with one click," urging them to support the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. The Violence Against Women Act, originally enacted in 1994, lapsed in 2019 and has not been reauthorized since. The bill would provide grants to state and local governments for programs addressing domestic abuse, sexual assault, dating violence and stalking, in addition to further narrowing the so-called boyfriend loophole to prohibit dating partners convicted of domestic violence or abuse from buying or owning guns. Current law only restricts gun purchases for spouses or formerly married partners who were convicted of abuse or are under a restraining order.
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Match.com Study: Singles Are Reevaluating Dating and Sex During the Pandemic
USA TODAY - According to Match's 11th annual Singles in America study, a survey of ~5K individuals in the U.S., singles are focused on intentional dating instead of casual relationships. Helen Fisher, a senior research fellow at the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University and chief science advisor at Match, said that it's a "historic time" for a "dating reset." "(Singles) really want emotional maturity," Fisher said. 11% of singles say they "want to date casually," compared to 62% who said that they "seek more meaningful, committed relationships." Meanwhile, 65% said they want a relationship within the next year.
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Podcast: Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
WID - In celebration of Global Diversity Awareness month, Women In Dating sponsored a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion podcast featuring Dayo Akinrinade (Africlick), Ana Kirova (Feeld) and Alexis Luerssen (Match) to discuss the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion within, and how their companies are offering equal opportunities to everyone.
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Match Releases Vaccination Data on the U.S. Single Population
PR NEWSWIRE - Match has released initial findings from two key themes of its forthcoming 11th annual Singles in America study. The data reveals that vaccination status has become of paramount importance to a vast majority of singles today, with 58% reporting it's the most important issue when it comes to dating a potential partner, more so even than traditional deal breakers like political affiliation (53%) or religion (43%). 73% of singles report they are vaccinated (compared to 64% of the general U.S. population) and 2 in 3 singles say they want their dating partners to be vaxxed.
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Meet the Former Match.com Director Turned Old-School Setup Evangelist
VANITY FAIR - Aug 20 - On her podcast, Paired by the People, Lakshmi Rengarajan reframes the setup as the more intentional analogue to dating apps. Having released six episodes since its inception in September, Paired is like a social-experiment capsule collection where Rengarajan takes her seven years of experience in the dating industry to set people up. Lakshmi was Match.com's director of event design for two years, and then worked on Match, ourtime.com, blackpeoplemeet.com, and helped launch the app BLK. She had always been interested very specifically in the art of the setup. Not matchmaking. "The matchmaking industry is a whole other beast and actually quite predatory. I was very interested in people who set people up without any kind of monetary incentive," she says. Each episode of Paired starts by introducing the listener to an existing couple, and they're the ones who go through candidate profiles and discuss who to set up.
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Match Repositions to Focus on Adults - Unveils New Brand Platform 'Adults Date Better'
MEDIA POST - Aug 11 - Match began the summer with its "Lick every stranger you can" campaign. Now Match is debuting a new brand platform: "Adults Date Better" based on research from Reddit's Dating Over 30 column where users emphasized that dating as an adult sucks. A TV ad, running in USA and Canada says being emotionally mature is hot, and your past experiences and relationships have made you into the person you are: interesting. Match added a "ghostbusting" feature that promotes accountability, helping daters close out conversations and not ghost prospects.
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Match Beta Test Targets Dating App Complaints
TECH CRUNCH - Aug 10 - Today Match introduces features addressing user complaints like how much time it takes to find a relevant match and ghosting. An anti-ghosting feature will push users to either continue a conversation or unmatch the recipient instead of leaving them hanging.
"Matched by Us," is a new recommendation system that presents one, free match a week. Users see each other and don't wait for a "like" back to engage in a conversation. Match has been internally testing adding human curation to suggestions, an actual match-making service. "Right now, human curation is one area that we're really excited about and want to crack," CPO Dushyant Saraph said. The new features are rolling out to Match's U.S. userbase in beta, as the company kicks off a new brand campaign targeting adult daters.
Match Group have 15m paying customers across its brands, up from 13m YOY. Quarterly revenue was $708m, with net income of $141m. Match Group plans to add audio and video chat, including live video, to its dating brand portfolio. Match's dating app is among those that will benefit from Hyperconnect integrations as Match explores "building out live experiences."
by Sarah Perez
See full article at Tech Crunch
Mark Brooks: Putting the people back into personals. The future of dating apps is 'live'. Match experimented with matchmakers under CEO Jim Safka, bought a 20% stake in Chinese hybrid matchmaking service Zhenai in 2011, and flirted with Three Day Rule in 2014. eHarmony also experimented with a brand extension into live high-end matchmaking in 2013.
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Match.com in $50M Class Action Crosshairs
LAW.COM - July 15 - A South Florida litigator filed a class action seeking $50M in damages in New York federal court against Match Group. The class action complaint alleges Match Group committed fraud, breach of contract, and breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing. Users claim they were tricked into purchasing subscriptions to Match.com. After creating free profiles, the defendant informed new users that other members had initiated contact with them. But to read those messages or to craft a response, the users had to upgrade their accounts to a paid subscription, which hundreds of thousands did only to find out that "many of these communications were scammers". The lawsuit is based on a FTC lawsuit filed in 2019 that stalled, and a separate action in California. Match Group settled the latter case in California state court last week for $2M, without admitting fault, based upon claims arising out of automatic renewals without user consent.
by Michael A. Mora
See full article at Law.com
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More Younger People Are Looking for Friends on Match, Bumble and Tinder
WALL STREET JOURNAL - July 8 - Dating apps are getting friendlier. More younger people see no problem swiping left or right to find friend matches rather than dates or hookups. Millennials and Generation Z have been comfortable using dating apps to meet platonic friends for a few years now, especially when moving to a new city. During the pandemic, the practice boomed. In a recent survey of 300 members of Generation Z aged 16 to 24 in the U.S., 35% said they have used dating apps to make platonic friends over the past 12 months, according to OnePulse, a consumer insight app and web portal. 27% said they used dating apps to make friends because they were lonely in lockdown. More women than men - 39% vs. 29% - said they used dating apps to make platonic friends.
by Ray A. Smith
See full article at Wall Street Journal
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Dr. Helen Fisher - Science Proves That Love Is an Addiction, Tech Is Changing Courtship
LTR - June 21 - Dr. Helen Fisher, Biological Anthropologist at the Kinsey Institute, has devoted her career to the scientific study of love, attraction, and compatibility. Dr. Fisher, who is the Chief Scientific Advisor for Match.com, has conducted numerous neurological, empirical, and survey studies to develop a greater understanding of relationships. According to her research, technology has not killed love, it has changed courtship. Love continues to be deeply woven into society and culture. Three brain systems influence romantic love: sex drive, romantic attraction, and attachment. They are governed by hormones and neurotransmitters. Dr. Fisher's annual study of daters shows that 40% met their last first date online. Video chatting has become a significant intermediary prior to in-person meetings, providing greater opportunity for vetting and chemistry-building. Dr. Helen Fisher shares her wealth of scientific knowledge in the latest video in the LTR Conference series.
LTR stands for Love, Technology, Relationships and the online conference covers the Internet dating and Online Social Communities space. It is for members of IDEA and OSCA.
The April LTR was kindly sponsored by RealMe, vPaaS by The Meet Group, Real Gifts & Courtland Brooks.
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Match Urges Singles to Get Back to Love
THE DRUM - June 15 - Ryan Reynolds' agency and production firm Maximum Effort has teamed with Match to deliver a playful, musical campaign encouraging singles to reignite their love lives. It's time to "Get back to love" according to Match. 12 real wedding singers belt out a parodic musical number urging the world's single folks to get back out there so they can get back to working again.
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